The market’s up nearly 500 points: Will the Obama White House flaunt it, or pooh-pooh the “gyration”?

NEW YORK – Wall Street got the news it wanted on the economy’s biggest problems — banks and housing — and responded with a rally that hurtled the Dow Jones industrials up nearly 500 points.

Investors added rocket fuel Monday to a two-week-old advance, cheering the government’s plan to help banks remove bad assets from their books and also welcoming a report showing a surprising increase in home sales. Major stock indicators surged more than 6 percent, including the Dow.

Monday’s 497-point Dow advance marked the fifth-biggest point gain in the history of the index — it’s 20th largest percent gain at 6.84 percent. The Dow has traded in positive territory seven of the last 10 sessions.

This is what Barack said recently about watching the market, when it was tanking:

""What I am looking for is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market… but the long-term,” Obama told reporters.

"The stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics,” said the president, whose own public job approval has been running at about two-thirds in the Gallup Poll’s daily tracking surveys. "It bobs up and down every day… if you spend your time worrying about that, you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.”